I almost titled this blog post “finding joy in first trimester fatigue as an enneagram 3″ and then was like…nah. Too far. I never got to that point.

Ha!

I was at a yoga event with MindBodyGreen and Naked Juice yesterday morning. It was so much fun. We did a yoga/cardio/dance class, talked with a nutritionist about intuitive eating, and had a bunch of delicious breakfast bites. I just kept thinking about how thankful I was to be feeling energetic in the second trimester! I love being able to do fun Austin workout classes on the weekends.

And then I thought about the months of Feb-April when I was feeling wayyy too fatigued to participate in any media events.

Ok…If you’re an enneagram pro, you’re way ahead of me. I think it’s fun to read about and I like listening to enneagram podcasts, but I’m definitely not an enneagram junkie. (And if you have no idea what the heck I’m talking about, start here to learn the basics of the enneagram personality types.)

I’m an enneagram 3, through and through. If you’re an enneagram 3, “The Achiever,”  some of these things probably resonate with you:

• You want to feel valuable and worthwhile. You love to impress others. 
• You might have a problem with workaholism and competitiveness. 
• When you’re in a healthy place, you lead with grace and inspire and motivate others.
• When you’re in an unhealthy place, you care too much about how others perceive you; you feel scared of being worthless.

And if you’re a 3 and you’re going through the fatigue of your first trimester, you might be feeling some of the same things I felt:

• Life has no purpose without goals. 
• I’m striving to achieve the same amount of productivity that I did before I was pregnant, and I’m falling short, day after day. 
• If I can’t center my day around creating success, I don’t want to try. At anything. At all. 
• I’m worried about what people will think of me…they don’t know I’m pregnant, but they can see that I’m not accomplishing as much as I did a few months ago and they’re going to think that I’m such a failure.

Oh my gosh, y’all! So many horrible, shameful thoughts went through my head from weeks 5-13 of pregnancy.

It’s safe to say that when I was in that 2 month-long cycle of throwing up, sleeping 12-14 hours a night, taking daily naps, and still having no energy to get things done, I was in the perfect storm of worthlessness as an enneagram 3. I just felt sad, defeated, and stuck. Taking naps, skipping workouts, sleeping in, watching Netflix on the couch…these are things that typically don’t bring me joy as an enneagram 3! (I know…some of y’all are thinking I’m absolutely bonkers, but if you’re a 3, I know you get me!)

As I was living in this for a couple of months, I had enough time to meditate on it and work toward finding some peace in the situation I was in. Here are a few of the things that worked for me.

Here Are 4 Ways You Can Find Peace In Pregnancy Fatigue As An Enneagram 3:

1. Recognize that this is a short-term phase. Oh my goodness, sweet girl. Please, please, please remind yourself daily (or hourly!) that this is a phase that will pass. I know it feels so disheartening when you have no idea if the symptoms will lift at week 14 or week 40, and you feel scared that this might be the new normal for you and you’ve now lost all sense of yourself.

But know that it will eventually end. Ok? It’s a phase of life. You’re allowed to really not like how you feel right now, and you can be sad. It won’t last forever. You’ll be back to your to-do lists and early mornings and ass-kickery soon enough.

2. Find goals that you can work toward with low energy. This will probably sound really funny to anyone who’s not a 3, but I made a goal of seeing how many hours I could sleep a night. HA! I loooove waking up early and starting my day with a boost of productivity, but when I realized that wasn’t going to happen during my 1st trimester, I started keeping track of how many hours I slept each night and trying to break my record.

Omg…so ridiculous. I know. But it helped me.

I also set a put a crazy high number of books on my kindle and decided to read 2/week during my first trimester. (I normally read 1/week.) Since I wasn’t feeling like doing anything that involved getting my butt off the couch, I opted for a goal-oriented form of rest (a number of books to finish) rather than something that would make me feel even more lethargic (binge-watching Netflix.)

3. Admire/love yourself. As a 3, you probably love doing all sorts of impressive things, and a big part of why you love doing those things is because you love to be admired by others. And now you’re in the pits of the first trimester and you’re accomplishing nothing and so you feel like you’ve lost a piece of yourself.

So….write yourself a love letter every morning. Give yourself a pat on the back for whatever you did accomplish that day. (My voice in my head when I managed to do any sort of workout in the first trimester? “Get it, girlfriend! You are such a rock for hauling yourself out of bed to get to this lunchtime barre class!”)

“Wow” yourself with the meaningful things you are accomplishing. Did you take a nap instead of guilting yourself out of it? Applause, applause! That’s what your growing baby needed for you to do, and so you accomplished something great today by taking that nap.

4. Journal/talk it out. I know you’re probably not telling a lot of people about your pregnancy, so all of these feelings of worthlessness are just getting bottled up inside.

Journal!! Write out all your feelings. Write about what you’re afraid of, and be specific. (Sometimes writing it out will help you realize that it’s a bit ridiculous…for instance, I wrote that I was afraid that since I was skipping 6 am workouts and going to noon barre classes instead, the people who are used to seeing me post about my morning workouts on instagram would start to think I’m getting lazy, and then they’d stop following me, and then my entire blogging business would collapse…I mean, dumb stuff once it’s all written out.)

Talk it out! Since I waited to tell my family until 10 weeks, I didn’t have a huge support network right at the beginning. So, I was constantly talking to Nate and trying to put into words how meaningless life felt without being able to achieve my normal goals. Being able to express my emotions to someone who loves me kept me from spiraling lower. He knows my personality type, so he was able to affirm that I’m accomplishing a lot by growing a human, and it’s ok if I’m not creating tons of new content for my instagram account right now.

While I can’t say that I found joy in the first trimester fatigue, I did come to terms with it and create a sense of peace and stillness in my life. I certainly don’t hope to go through the same symptoms, but if we decide to have a second baby and I experience them again, I’ll know better how to use my personality type to adapt to the situation.

Thanks so much for stopping by today. If you’re in the throes of the first trimester right now, I’m sending you all the good vibes!